London auctioneers accused of selling looted antiquities

The auction house Bonhams is facing calls to withdraw a Roman antiquity from a London sale as it faces claims that it was looted from Turkey.

- Dalya Alberge

A striking 3rd-century Roman silver plate, decorated with a river god, is lot 62 of the 5 December auction, and is expected to fetch between £20,000 and £30,000.

But Dr Christos Tsirogiannis, an affiliated archaeology lecturer at the University of Cambridge and a leading expert on trafficking networks for looted antiquities, has evidence that Turkish traffickers supplied it in 1992 to Gianfranco Becchina, convicted in Italy and Greece of dealing illegally in antiquities in recent years.

Becchina's archive was seized by police and shared with Tsirogiannis by the late Paolo Giorgio Ferri, the Italian lawyer who prosecuted traffickers in looted antiquities. The documents extend to thousands of images and other material seized from dozens of traffickers.

Those relating to Becchina detail the Roman plate and the traffickers who sold it to him, showing that it was part of a group of Roman silver objects found together, for which he paid $1.6m. They detail payments in instalments and even bank accounts.